Anaphylaxis :: Noise for Lovers

Jason Coffman has been working as Anaphylaxis for over ten years,
cultivating a technique of noise collage that combines a love for noisy
drones, forgotten theme songs, radio signals, and the mechanical chatter of
industrial chaos. Noise for Lovers is a subtle farrago of these
aforementioned elements that drifts like a haunted cloud across a bleak
landscape. Opting to dwell in the atmospheric rather than the ferociously
noisy, Noise for Lovers is a record suitable for close headphone listening.
You succumb to the swirling ambience of this record rather than have your
brain scoured by its explosive content.

"Hopeless" swirls about the listener, haunted by the looped memory of Teresa
Santoski's vocals, and it is a mood that envelopes you completely. It is a
slowly turning whirlwind that combines the noisy guitar textures of
Loveliescrushing with the long tone ambience of Stars of the Lid, building a
storm of noise that revolves so slowly that you can almost pick out each
individual strand of static. Her voice is heavily layered in "Tomorrow
Romance," creating a spectral round of voices that float above watery drones
like a shimmering curtain of atmospheric effects.

There are beats to be found on Noise for Lovers, stuttering hip-hop rhythms
and chattering pulsations of excited particles. Sluggish beats carry the
lost hope of atonal brass in the funeral march "This Is The Place Where The
Dead Help The Living," and hard rhythms thrive beneath the long drones of
"All Yours" as if Mlada Fronta concert was happening in the basement of a
coffee house where Robert Fripp was performing a solo Frippertronics set.

"Wait Here" echoes. It evolves like the opening loop of a Sigur Rós song
that has been time-stretched so far that the human voice becomes just a
swelling breath of sound. An eleven and a half minute exhalation, "Wait
Here" holds you on the cusp of dawn, streaking the horizon with the barest
hint of color. Suspended in darkness, your head is slowly filled with
echoes. "Vfd" takes the dying echo of "Wait Here" and marches it across the
discolored horizon, cutting it up into a chattering syncopation and
thrusting it along with the prod of a heavy-footed beat. The final
twenty-five minutes of Noise for Lovers is the paired lullaby of "Goodnight
Princess" and "(Sweet Dreams)" that is a beautiful summation of the elements
heard previously on the record. This is a phantasmal ballad for
biomechanical babies, a drone poem about rust colored skies and dervishes of
sand and static.

Coupled with their last impressive release (Hollydrift's Waiting for the
Tiller), Parasomnic is the label to watch for atmospheric collage work. As
much as I doubted a record could thrill me as much as Hollydrift's, I have
to admit that I'm ready to choke on those words after hearing Anaphylaxis.
Noise for Lovers is a subtle miasma, a toxic decay that creeps beneath a
series of glorious tone poems, a patina of rust that burnishes the belly of
these long notes. It takes a meticulous and discreet hand to make a noise
record that doesn't rely on shattering sound systems and flensing ears.
Jason Coffman is my new hero.

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http://www.parasomnicrecords.com